"We're going to get hammered. There is no way we are going to offset (the cuts) with local dollars," Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton said Friday. "You can't balance the state budget on the backs of local taxpayers. It's completely unfair. Naturally, those cuts will be passed on to the school districts."

Bethel Superintendent Gary Chesley said his school board talked about the proposed cuts Thursday night.

"This makes it impossible to be a good manager of a school district or a town," Chesley said. "There's no reliable help from the state. You can't count on it."

He expected his district would lose state aid for special education costs, along with other grant losses.

"How do you explain this to taxpayers -- that we will have less services for fewer kids?" Chesley said.

Danbury school finance director Elio Longo said he expects the state to decide on the cuts before local school districts finalize their budget proposals for 2009-10.

"These are reductions to core services. They are not supplemental services," he said, projecting the district will lose between $2 to $3 million in state aid.

In addition, Longo said the city will lose about $200,000 under a proposal to change the state's reimbursement for children who attend the Western Connecticut Academy of International Studies.

Now the city receives $3,000 for each Danbury student who attends the regional magnet school and $6,730 for each student who comes from another town. The reimbursement was set to increase to $7,400 in 2009 and $8,200 in 2010.

But under the new proposal, the state would eliminate the $3,000 reimbursement for Danbury students and increase the reimbursement for students from other towns to $13,000.

Since about 260 of the 390 students in the school are from Danbury, Longo said the change would amount to a $200,000 loss in state aid.

And the district is "already dealing and reeling from other economic factors," like higher energy costs. "It's quite challenging times ahead of us," Longo said.

The governor's office told the state education department that cuts must be presented before any department expansions will be considered. The education department has proposed additions to its budget worth $68 million, including restoring a $20 million reading grant that gave Danbury about $900,000.

In a memo to the state Board of Education last week, McQuillan did not sugarcoat the news.

"Given that over 97 percent of our appropriation is in the form of direct education aid to school districts and municipalities and the operation of the Connecticut Technical High School System, deep cuts to education aid are unavoidable under any 10 percent reduction scenario," he wrote.

"Clearly there is no easy or painless method for providing reduction options totaling 10 percent of the department's budget without significantly harming the education of Connecticut's children and impacting the municipal tax burden."

Contact Eileen FitzGerald

at eileenf@newstimes.com

or at (203) 731-3333.

$283 million in proposed state cuts to education for 2009-10. A reduction of $46 million includes: Continuing caps on grants for public transportation, nonpublic transportation, adult education, health services and education agency leases, which saves $33.39 million. Not implementing the new 1,000 school readiness preschool slots, which saves $7.7 million. The remaining $237 million could be reached by: Option 1 -- Reducing state Education Cost Sharing grants to towns by $237.6 million (12.3 percent). Danbury's $17 million would be cut to $15 million. Option 2 -- Proportionately reducing state categorical grants by a total of $237.6 million (about 36.5 percent each), including but not limited to priority school districts, school readiness, pupil transportation, excess cost-student based, adult education, vo-ag, charter schools, magnet schools, and state breakfast. For Danbury that could mean: $2.3 million priority school district grant is reduced by $900,000. $4.3 million school readiness grant is reduced by $1. 3 million. $1. 4 million for pupil transportation is reduced by $490,000. $200,000 for special ed costs is reduced by $75,000. $200,000 for adult education is reduced by $75,000. Danbury's total reductions, $3 million. Option 3 -- Hybrid of 1 and 2, reducing Education Cost Sharing by $118.8 million (6.15 percent) and categorical grants proportionately to meet the remaining $118.8 million (about 18.81 percent each). Danbury would lose about $2.5 million.